NASA Project Gets Apache Stamp of Approval

January 11, 2011 – A NASA-led project has won the full support of the Apache Software Foundation, bolstering development efforts around Java-based middleware that uses metadata to foster cross-platform collaboration.

We found this information on Information Week titled, “NASA Open Source Architecture Wins Apache Support.” Apache has deemed the Object Oriented Data Technology (OODT) architecture a Top Level Project. This means it is one of a handful of the foundation’s open source projects to receive project management and resource support.

OODT was first developed in 1998 as a way to build a national framework for data sharing and has evolved beyond that for applications in physical science, medical research, and ground data systems. This Java-based middleware uses metadata to allow end users to simultaneously leverage disparate and geographically dispersed computing and data resources.

This isn’t NASA’s first dance with the open source community. The core technology for the agency’s cloud-computing platform, Nebula, is a contributing technology for OpenStack, an open source cloud computing initiative.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.